Our Mission.
to connect, inform, and support people globally who are struggling to reverse the damaging health effects of an increasingly toxic world
Let’s face it, each day we pour dangerous toxins into our environment, saturating our air, waters, earth—and food supply—with hazardous chemicals, heavy metals, and antibiotics proven to adversely affect human, animal, and plant life. Numerous studies have shown hundreds of chemicals in humans—including children—even residues of DDT and other persisent pesticides banned in the 70’s. We act surprised at the high incidence of cancers and other diseases and yet, how can we expect to live in a toxic environment and not be affected by toxins? This website is for those whose health has already started to reflect the health of the environment they live in, who are starting to make the connections, and want to do something about it.
In particular, we focus on environmentally based illnesses, a class of conditions that are poorly understood and that conventional medicine has been slow to study and treat. These include Lyme Disease, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Fibromyalgia, Chemical Sensitivity, Electrical Sensitivity, and Mold Illness.
Our intentions:
• to provide an extensive library of first-hand experience with both alternative and conventional healing methods;
• to reveal a clearer path to individual wellness through the collective trials and tribulations of thousands–potentially millions–of others;
• to offer emotional support and opportunities for connection to those on a healing path;
• to educate and inspire others to lead healthier, richer, more fulfilling lives, in harmony with the universe.
How PT came to be.
Planet Thrive was created by Julie Genser–photographer, writer and certified holistic health counselor–whose life was derailed by extensive food and chemical sensitivities brought on by multiple exposures to environmental toxins. Aside from the typical assaults we all experience in a lifetime, she was exposed to a broken mercury thermometer in her late 20s, toxic fumes in a garbage dump fire during a photography workshop in her early 30s, the harmful fumes (and emotional trauma) from the World Trade Center fires of 9/11, mold resulting from a flood in her apartment in 2003, and Lyme disease, which she believes is a 35+ year infection underlying all of her other health challenges.
Through the typical path of the heavy metal poisoned and chemically injured, it took years of being misdiagnosed, mis-medicated, and dismissed by doctors for her to recognize her set of symptoms as part of a much larger problem. She attended The Institute of Integrative Nutrition in 2001-2002, which started her on her healing path. The growth of the Internet around this time eventually allowed her to connect with others on a similar journey to share personal experience and hard-earned knowledge. Little by little, she learned.
This website emerged out of an undying hope to use her years of research and personal experiments with diet, supplements, chelation and other alternative practices to help others in their search for health. This website is meant to fill in the gaps that she found during her online research, and to complement existing sources of information and support.
A few important things Julie has learned above everything else:
- One must always remain at the helm of their own personal care
- There is no magic bullet–never put blind faith into one doctor or treatment
- What works for one does not always work for another–due to variability of individual biochemistry, and many other factors
- What works for one may change over time–re-evaluate your treatment plan every now and again
- Never give up hope
Julie left the East Coast in 2008 to explore chemical free living in northern Arizona. She enjoys living on the edge of National Forest land with her two purr babes and continues to heal + evolve on this magical adventure called life.